2018, 6th week

Saeedeh Ziaeefard

Department

Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics

Area of research

Autonomous Underwater Gliders and Promoting Robotic in STEM education among middle school students

Abstract

I have been working in two fields of research. Autonomous Underwater vehicles (AUVs) and Promoting Robotics in STEM education. AUVs help marine scientists to explore the oceans and lakes to collect water quality data and mapping the seabed. In past decade, AUVs have been utilized in underwater military missions such as Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Autonomous Underwater Gliders (AUGs) are a subclass of AUVs and are especially useful for missions that requires stealthiness and high mission duration. They traditionally use change of buoyancy to traverse in the water and have a saw-tooth shape motion. To increase the performance and maneuverability of these vehicles, I studied AUG’s dynamics and introduced a series of advanced flight patterns to be added to the motion planning database. In my second research topic, I studied the motivation factor and interests of middle school students towards robotics and STEM. The research question was to investigate effect of “helping human life” theme robots in increasing their interests.

Synopsis of research

Currently I am working on extending the maneuverability of underwater vehicles bu concatenating the basic flight patterns. This study can contribute to autonomous vehicle’s motion planning and path finding mission. I am also working on promoting robotics in STEM which consists of hands-ob robotics classes held at Michigan Tech in summers. The goal is to increase the interest of students and their parents to robotics. My study focus is to motivate female students towards STEM and more specifically robotics.

Fun fact

When I was little I always wanted to have a puppy, but I never had one. Now I have two of them. I love them so much that if I could I would adopt all the puppies in the world!